


Like Fireflies, Like Dust

by wemaketheworldgo



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Gen, Romance, Spirits, basically hotarubi no mori e
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-08-13 22:52:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16481270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wemaketheworldgo/pseuds/wemaketheworldgo
Summary: You will always come back to him. There is no one else in your lifetime or his that will ever be the same.





	1. Intangible

Extraordinary.  
  
The incredibly sharp cerulean sky with the slow, rolling clouds, mirrored below by the water-logged rice paddies; the thick forest that loomed on the edge of their property, its tall trees foreboding of adventure; the scent of your childhood summer home that was somehow preserved and immaculate despite years of abscence. It was all so extraordinary.  
  
Him, most of all.  
  
His silver hair, his plain white kimono, and his slender build almost made him seem transparent, made of wind, as if a simple breeze might blow him away. The fox-like white mask that covered the entirety of his face, painted with delicately ornate designs. His bare feet on the fresh mountain soil, with no footprints.  
  
He had been standing at the gate of the house after you had settled in, like a dog waiting for its master to take it for a walk. You could tell immediately that he was not human, but you felt no fear, only familiarity. That was strange, considering you hadn't stayed in that house for eight summers now. You realized then that everything about this place was familiar yet unmemorized, in the same way a word lies on the tip of your tongue yet never escapes your lips.  
  
And that was his name written on the edge of your heart, as you uncovered the layers of dust that covered it, resurfacing memories drawing you towards him, until you could finally remember--  
  
"Dong Sicheng."  
  
He remained as still as a whisper, only his clothes and hair moving with the wind, his face hidden underneath the mask. With a voice that rings like a temple bell: "You remember."  
  
It was only a matter of time before you came back to him.  
  
  
_________  
  
When you were a child, you spent one summer in your grandparents' cottage in the mountain. The adventurous child that you were, you wandered off into the forest while the adults weren't watching. Predictably, you had gotten lost, and by the time the sun had started to hang lower in the sky, you had resigned to sitting on a rock and crying.  
  
He found you then, like he found you now. A figure of white from head to toe, he approached you warily, although in your fit you didn't even notice him.  
  
"Are you lost?"  
  
You stopped crying to look up, into the eyes painted onto his mask. The light shone through him in an ethereal way, as if he wasn't completely solid.  
  
"I'll take you home."  
  
You held onto one end of a stick as he held the other, as he told you he couldn't touch you. He walked you to the edge of the forest, and as soon as you spotted the cottage, you ran as fast as you could in relief. It was only when you reached the gates that you remembered to turn around and say goodbye.

But he was gone.  
  
So you went back to look for him the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that. He would always find you, and at the end of each day before sunset he would walk you back to the edge of the forest, and you would promise another tomorrow.  
  
His name was Dong Sicheng. He was a wind spirit, lived in the forest and lived alone. He had spirit friends, but he forbade you from visiting them or asking for them. He would regale stories of his friends Taeil, the water nymph of a pond at the far end of the forest, and Yuta, a mischievous wood nymph who liked to twist tourist paths and get them lost. He talked of Taeyong, god of this forest, who took care of all the spirits as if they were his children, visited often by his lover Jaehyun, a minor god of a nearby major river.  
  
At the end of that first summer, you promised to return every single summer to play. And you held that promise, coming back to your grandparents' home each summer under the guise of wanting to spend time with them.  
  
Then eight summers ago, your grandparents died. And you stopped coming.  
  
Sicheng waited.  
  
And you forgot.  
  
_____________  
  
"Sicheng, why do people die?"  
  
You were now fully grown, almost an adult. You had only come back to clean out the house; your parents were planning to sell it soon. Staying there reminded you too much of your grandparents. There were traces of them in every nook and cranny, every speck of dust. You missed them too much, and the house suffocated you. You used this reason to spend as much time in the forest as you could before the sun set.  
  
That brings you to the present, both of you walking together at arm's length, a stick in between your hands.  
  
Sicheng seemed to ponder on the question before answering, "so they can live."  
  
Your walking had brought you to a small glen, familiar to you in the way all forest clearings looked alike, making you wonder if you had visited this glen once in your childhood.  
  
"As a spirit, I live forever. Well, at least until something threatens my existence." You wait for him to continue as you seat yourself on a fallen log. "In that way, all my days run together. My days are no different now than they were thirty years ago, or a hundred years ago, as long as this forest has existed. My memories all blur together. They aren't very precious, unlike for humans who know they will die someday and strive to make their existence precious."  
  
"Like this, most spirits of this forest forget things easily. Since most days are the same."  
  
"Will you forget me too, when I die?" You ask.  
  
A sudden gust of wind hums in your ears as he turns to look at you now, rustling the leaves of the trees and stirring the streams of sunlight filtering through. The sun was getting lower. It would be sunset in an hour.  
  
"No. Never." his voice rings, echoes against the tree trunks. "You... you are precious."  
  
You feel a lump rise in your throat and heat pool in the back of your eyes. How can your heart drop and leap at the same time? There are so many things to say, yet the words seem to get jumbled up in your mind as it swirls. It swirls and spins and blurs and the only thing you can see is the delicate white figure before you, stark against the dark green of the forest behind him.  
  
"May I... can I see your face beneath the mask before I die?"  
  
Everything is suddently still. The trees stop rustling, the air turns heavy, even the birds stop chirping. Your mind stops its hurricane. You're grounded. He grounds you.  
  
He brings his hand up to his mask. Lifts it away from his face. Your breath hitches in your throat.  
  
He's beautiful.  
  
A slender nose sloping sharply towards his mouth. Thin lips drawn into a line, gentle and soft. His small face framed perfectly by his silver hair. His eyes. God, his eyes. Fox-like, calm and deep, a thousand years of the forest contained in the warm hazel of his irises, with specks of silver glinting in the sunlight.  
  
He's so beautiful you almost can't bear to look at him. Your eyes are drawn to the mask in his hand. "May I?" you gesture to the mask and look up in his eyes-- _those eyes_ \--for confirmation.  
  
"Okay. It's a human artifact, anyway," he says, handing it to you. You don't question the story behind it. That's for another day.  
  
The mask is much more detailed close up. It's paper-light, sturdy as a rock. Ivory, you suspect. The paint designs are rolling spirals and intricate shapes scattered carefully over the smooth surface. If you look carefully, you can make out the shapes of forest animals. You trace your fingers over them, delicately, exploratively.  
  
Sicheng watches you quietly. "Do you want it?" he asks, noticing your heightened interest in it. You shake your head. The mask was Sicheng, a part of him now. If it was a human artifact and he had kept it all these years, it must mean a lot to him. You hand it back with a soft smile, thinking that maybe now you know him a little better after all the years he remained a mystery.  
  
You get up now, noticing the length of the shadows stretching behind the trees. "Let's go home."  
  
Sicheng puts his mask over his face again, grabbing one end of the stick as you take the other.  
  
When you reach the end of the forest and the cottage is in view again, you let go of the stick. "See you tomorrow," you say.  
  
Then, in the spur of the moment, you turn and lean towards him, careful not to touch him anywhere, and place a kiss on his mask where the shape of his lips lay.  
  
You run home, and when you reach the gates you turn around once more towards the forest.  
  
He's still standing there, looking at you.


	2. Unwavering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sicheng would wait an eternity for the one he loves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've decided to stray from the original hotarubi no mori e plot and just make my own lore with characters! let me know if this is a good direction :)

It’s a humid summer afternoon, the kind that makes your hair stick to your eyelids and your palms uncomfortably moist. You sit at the edge of a pond, watching ripples form on the surface of the water from where fishes' mouths come up to catch unsuspecting gerridae. Poor bugs, you thought. The cycle of prey and predator, life and death, is a cruel but necessary rhythm for the existence of this ecosystem. It was in places like this forest where such things were more observable, and you wonder how many such cycles Sicheng himself has witnessed, residing here.

Sicheng sits behind you in the shade of a young maple tree, knees crossed on the wet grass. He doesn’t seem to be worried about staining his white kimono. His mask is in his lap; after the first time you had asked to see his face, he began to go more often without it. You were still awestruck each time you saw his features and found yourself staring at him a lot without realizing. In today’s effort to avoid doing so, you chose to face the pond; this was in vain, because you still found yourself watching his reflection in the water. Luckily, his eyes were closed as he leaned his head against the tree trunk, though he wasn’t asleep.

There is a slight breeze in the air, enough to lift the heaviness of the humid weather-- certainly Sicheng’s doing. The sunlight dances across his skin as the leaves in the branches above sway delicately. You can almost see the wind caress his hair in tendrils, as if it were a lover.

You think of the story of the god of the forest, Taeyong and his river god lover, Jaehyun--a tale Sicheng recounts at your frequent request: a tale of a heavenly huntsman who headed to the river to investigate a legend of a water-dwelling monster and instead found a stunning deity, and fell in love.

To woo him, Taeyong created a flower that grows on the water’s surface but roots in the sluggish soil in the shallows--in the water that flows away, something to make him stay. He made a sinking seed and dropped it in the mud. Jaehyun, with all the strength of his large river, could easily wash the bud away to become food for the fishes. But instead, he allowed the roots to burrow deep, and thus bloomed love in the form of water lilies.

“Sicheng, have you ever been in love?”

The wind stills. The tree branches stop their dance, the fish swim to the other end, the air is so heavy that it’s almost suffocating. Through the reflection in the pond, you can see that Sicheng’s eyes are wide open, but he isn’t looking at you. He’s staring at the mask in his lap, a hand hovering over the patterns that trace the surface.

“Yes,” he whispers, “I have.”

You long to turn around and reach out to him, to unravel the notes of melancholy that ring in his answer, to decipher the symbols that hide the story of the mask. But something in the bottom of your ribcage lies weighty and holds you in place, threatening to rise to the back of your eyes. You can only watch the figure in the water’s surface as he stares wistfully into the trees.

“I wasn’t always a spirit. I was once human.”

This takes you by surprise, making you whip your head to face him. The breeze has returned, kissing your forehead in consolation to cool the sweat that had formed there. A ballet of _komorebi_ plays on his features, on his kimono, on the forest floor and makes his eyes look warm. You can only stare.

“Centuries ago, I was a human like you, in a village nearby that has long since disappeared,” he begins. “I was a young boy, maybe twenty-three, working for my father who was a carpenter. I lived a simple life, cutting wood and making houses. I wasn’t the strongest boy my age, I couldn’t lift as much as my father, and I was always made fun of for that.”

“My village had a young priestess. She had been chosen when she was young and knew no other life outside of her duties. But she was treated like a deity, an object to worship, someone who had to put the needs of the village above her own. And it was horrible for her, being so young. They didn’t even allow her to show her face. She was the one who owned...” Sicheng holds up the fox mask, “this.”

Sicheng’s eyes meet yours and there is something you can’t decipher in his expression. His smile is wistful and twisted, and it feels like he is looking deep into your soul. It almost scares you, but he looks away into the woods, continuing his story.

“One day, I had been out in the forest to gather wood, and I met her collecting herbs for medicine. And even though she never showed her face, I fell in love. Everyday, we would meet in this forest, just like now. Here, I wasn’t the scrawny carpenter’s boy, and she wasn’t the spiritual head of a village. We were just a boy and a girl. And everything was good.”

“That is, until the villagers found out. They believed that we intended to elope and run away from the village, even though we never wanted to do so. They detested me, thought that I would take away their precious priestess and that by doing so would bring misfortune onto them. They decided to punish me.”

Sicheng visibly winces as he recounts the story, “they took me into the forest alone at night and beat me up. I was too weak to defend myself.” The way his eyes harden and jaw sets makes a mixture of pain and anger bubble inside you. The image of Sicheng getting hurt terrified you.

“I didn’t make it out alive. They left me in the forest to the wild animals. It was Taeyong, the god of the forest, who found me.”

___________

_Sicheng finds himself staring at his own lifeless body lying on the grass. The moonlight shines across the planes of his face, making him look ethereal. Sicheng would have thought it looked peaceful would it not have been for the flower of red blood blooming across his white kimono and spilling over to paint the blades of grass burgundy. He feels no pain, only despair._

_“You’re dead, young soul,” A voice from the trees calls out. Sicheng turns to look and finds a figure stepping out of the dark, and he is the most beautiful man he has ever seen. With light hair rivalling the brightness of the moon and sharp, almost elven features, he seemed too perfect to be real._

_“Are you the god of the dead?”_

_The man chuckles, “No, only the god of this forest. The god of the dead hasn’t come for you yet. You don’t know me, but I know you well.”_

_Sicheng tilts his head in confusion and points to himself. “Me?”_

_“Yes, you. You come to this forest often to meet your love, and I’ve witnessed it. You have a pure soul, capable of love without appearances, and gods look favourably at that. So I have a proposition for you.”_

_“What is that?”_

_“Be immortalized as a spirit in this forest. I’m in need of a wind spirit, someone to take care of the migration of the birds and the spreading of tree seeds and whatnot. You will stay in this forest forever, and live with us here instead of the underworld.”_

_Sicheng looks at his lifeless body, thinks of the girl in the fox mask who comes to the forest to collect herbs for her medicine._

_“I’ll do anything to see her again.”_

_“As a spirit in this forest, I assure you you can watch over her when she comes. But,” Taeyong warns, “you can never touch her. You exist in the spiritual realm now, coming in contact with a being that doesn’t belong there will make you disappear.”_

_Sicheng is crestfallen at the idea of never being able to touch her again, but at least he can see her._

_Taeyong suddenly looks up, over Sicheng’s shoulder. “She’s coming,” he says, and Sicheng turns around, tries to brace himself when he hears a flurry of footsteps approaching._

_“Sicheng! Oh, Sicheng, what have they done to you?” She wails as soon as she sees the body, drops to her knees on the blood-soaked soil. Her mask muffles her cries, but they reach the far ends of the forest. As he watches her cling to his dead chest, no heartbeat to be found, Sicheng sobs violently and finds himself shaking so hard that a strong wind has begun to rattle the trees. How can the dead even weep so hard, he wonders. They have no right to, not when they leave the living behind to deal with the pain._

_Before Sicheng accidentally summons a tempest, Taeyong places a hand on his shoulder, signalling him to calm down. Sicheng tries to get his emotions under control, tries to suppress the flurry of wind that he inadvertently induced. As the last gust of wind dies down, the young girl wipes her tears and stands up._

_She performs a ritual for the dead._

_She digs him a grave under a patch of daffodils and somehow places his body into the soil. Before she covers it up, she kneels beside him._

_“My parting gift, my last goodbye,” she prays. She takes off her fox mask and places it on his face, placing a kiss on the lips of the still-warm ivory._

___________

  


“That was the first time I ever saw her face,” Sicheng says, his voice breathy and low. He’s looking at you again with that unreadable expression. There’s something like longing in his eyes, yet you’re unsure if he’s really looking at you or if his mind is somewhere else.

“She looked just like you.”

You stop breathing. Your ears start ringing. Something hot is rising from your stomach to your throat and your vision is starting to blur. Your mind is racing so fast you can’t even understand your thoughts. It’s the the middle of a summer day but all you think of is a pale white figure in the forest moonlight and you don’t know if the world is spinning or if you’re in a tornado. Before you realize it, you’re on your feet and you’re running. You run and run and run without any direction until you somehow reach the edge of the forest and you speed down the road to the gate of your grandparents’ cottage and you don’t know how you got there but you’re looking back to the trees and he’s there. He’s still there.

He’s always been there.

**Author's Note:**

> idk if i should make more chapters for this. lemme know in the comments uwu


End file.
